Come the White Savior! and Face your insanity... through substantial substance abuse.
There are a couple of improvements from the last game, such as no more re-spawning enemies at checkpoints, NO MORE MALARIA SHOTS, more advanced upgrade system, better presented faction war, more meaningful exploration, more open world (instead of labyrinth-like ravines of Far Cry 2), etc.
---The story:
You play as a rich white guy who probably never worked a day in his life and who came to the island with his friends and family to relax, jump out of airplanes and be "the king of the world". Short time after you and your buddies get captured and butt raped by a pirate named Vaaaaaaaas. Eventually, after escaping, you find out that you possess magical-primal-instinct-killer-powers which you develop and which enable you to kill pirates, run for miles without stopping, rescue your friends (or whoever is left) and liberate the dark-skinned native population on the island who accept you as one of their own and eventually come to revere your mere presence. Typical White Savior theme, it's kind of sickening. Dances with the Wolves, Avatar, Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, anyone?
---The graphics:
The graphics are okay despite the fact that this is one of the few games to fully utilize quad core processors. The jungle is static: no vegetation moves on the island because there is no wind (except for when it's raining), the waves always move though. . There's some destructibility but not much. The field fires are back though which is good. The drawing distance kind of sucks though, there's this constant distance blur and it gets even worse when you are hand-gliding. It just doesn't look crisp or sharp enough so it kind of hurts your eyes, aesthetically speaking. To add to the injury you sometimes see trees appearing in the distance and you also see massive texture load almost every time you spawn at a safe house. The water is just okaish. If you swim under water and look up you will see this weird pre-rendered texture of the same waves which looks pretty bad. Think of Crysis (5 years ago) and how that game managed to create unique wave patterns distinct from each other.
One thing that does help is the field of view which can be set at 110 degrees. I honestly thought I was playing on a 2560x1600 monitor.
The day to night cycle and vice versa is right out of the Twilight Zone episode and it can ruin the immersion somewhat. Basically, if you stand still, the day/night transition will take a very long time. However, when you start moving the day/night will end as fast as you are moving in the world! Trying hand-gliding for 1 minute and the day will end in 1 minute. I kid you not.
---The physics:
The physics are mostly well done. You can't just keep jumping and climbing everything like in Skyrim. And when you fall down the hill or you don't just hover in air, you slide down and hurt yourself. However, at the same time you can jump and infinite amount of time and run and swim for as long as you want – no stamina whatsoever. The climbing is done pretty well.
---The gameplay:
it's Consolized somewhat. For instance if you want to sneak up on someone and knife them you could easily do it without breaking a sweat. For one thing, the enemies' field of vision is extremely limited both during the day and night (if I recall, it was much easier to sneak up on enemies in Far Cry 2 especially after you save enough to buy a stealth suit). You can sneak up on them even when they are supposed to be seeing you and the detection indicator won't even go op. Then, when you are about 10 feet away from them you can click the melee button and knife them easily even if they see you for a second, I kid you not. I forget how many outposts I took out just by using my knife. Also, the menus suck. You go into your loot sack and it's cluttered with stuff you collected. It's not organized in any way in case you want to clear up some room. It would help if the yellow leaves and red leaves were actually pained YELLOW and RED on the screen instead of the game indicating they were through text. Same goes for animal skins. Just color them in appropriately, not too hard.
There's also no more quick save, which works in some linear games with the whole checkpoint system but not here. You HAVE to finish missions before you can manually save (by going to your main menu) or your will lose some progress like crafting and collecting items. Not having the ability to quicksave diminishes the RPG quality of this game in some ways. For instance you go on a mission to shoot 5 deer with a specific weapon. You kill 2 and decide to craft something. Then you fail to kill the other 3 because you miss and run out of bullets. Mission failed. Start over, and craft another item AGAIN. Same goes for loot and collecting hard to reach relics. Also, why only 3 save slots? The two previous games had an unlimited amount of save slots. Why? Why can't I save the best moments of the game?
What they also did is replace the hidden diamond briefcases with boxes of loot that are always shown on your mini-map. Why? Same goes for plants that are to be harvested. That simplifies the game in many ways, so you never really end up searching for something because it's always up there on the minimap. Far Cry 2 didn't have this problem (you didn't have a minimap and you had REALLY look for them diamonds using your proximity tracker). However, at the same time you didn't really collect as much stuff in Far Cry 2 as you do here.
The constant notifications in the upper left corner are also annoying. Seriously, I'm trying to explore that part of the island, I KNOW that going to the Medusa ship is the mission objective, yet I am getting that notification a few times every minute and the only way to make it go away is to complete the actual mission.
The enemy tagging via camera is back from the first game. Only this time, once you tag your enemies you can see them through the terrain! How convenient! Just like in Hitman: Absolution.
The safe houses are still here however, now you can buy and sell your gear at any safe house! Why? You don't need to travel to those very few people who trade your diamonds for weapons and upgrades. Also, you can't sleep at safe houses anymore and pick the time of the day that you want to complete your objective. However, that's hardly relevant now since the day/night cycle now entirely depends on how fast you are moving in the world.
Far Cry 2 healing is back!
The skinning of animals isn't really skinning, it's just taking the same chunk of flesh; be it a turtle, a shark, or a giant carnivorous bird.
You also can't see your legs or cast a shadow…figures.
Viewing any foe or animal through optics automatically tags them, enabling you to see them through walls during firefights, thereby taking out lots of challenge out of the game.
Most animals also take several shots to the head to die. WTF?
The game also features a Kill-Zone type of cover system which is welcome in an FPS.
---The AI:
95% of all AI's look alike. Most of them wear red for some reason. Quite often they are as dumb as a stick insofar as taking them out by one goes since most of them probably have extreme cases of near-sightedness. However, when they start ganging up on you and start calling in reinforcements then you got to think quick.
---The weapons:
Pretty decent, the kickback is sometimes not enough though, feels too arcadish. There's some customization there and there, like better scope, extending magazine. The constant lack of ammo forces you to savor your shots. Also, I don't like the way new guns become available to you. Basically new weapons get unlocked when you disable radio towers. How is that relevant to you being able to buy new weapons from your safe house lockers now?
---The Island:
This time around the map is allegedly many times bigger than 50 square km map of Far Cry 2. The Island is also swamped with some animals that have no business inhabiting a tropical island, like the wild dogs, goats and bears....mmkays? There are plenty of various locations to discover, wrecked ships, underwater caves, small camps. I especially loved the WWII bunkers and artillery guns. Exploration is fun.
---The inventory system:
Basically you cannot go around the island collecting loot and money because you will run out of space for both, (oh and you can't explore the entire island until you climb radio towers). So you constantly have to sell your stuff and buy items and weapons so that you have room for scavenging more money. I kinda like the fact that you cannot be a pack mule, at least at first. Later on however, you can carry up to 4 weapons (you could carry 3 in Far Cry 2, however the third slot didn't always count). Finding and skinning pigs is essential if you want to carry more than $ 1000. So even if you want to buy that $ 1,500 weapon at first, tough luck because you can't. Also, the crafting itself is pretty much done in around 8 hours since you start playing. You basically upgrade your capacity to the fullest by then.
The HUD is your face all the time and the menus are annoying, especially when you go into your loot sack and peruse through those giant icons indicating your items. Not only that, when you are completing a mission and then decide to go astray for a moment to explore an area a text will pop up every minute or so prompting you to go there and complete that mission CONSTANTLY until you actually complete the mission at hand.
As far as realism goes, well I'd say that Far Cry 2 was more realistic in some ways. First off, you didn't earn XP for killing enemies, so it felt less arcadish. And you didn't have to chase animals around the island to slay them so that you could carry more weapons, ammo and money. Also, playing Far Cry 3 made me wish more games used the Dunia 2 engine. It's pretty impressive, but I feel I liked it more in the African Setting. The lush vegetation, the shadow and the ambience looked and felt better than here.
Co-Op is fun but lacks replay value since it's basically a skirmish. In some ways it feels more like a competition rather than a cooperative buddy experience.
Multiplayer is pretty solid, I must say. What's annoying though is constantly getting the temporary killer instinct ability and being able to see through walls for some time. I also like how when the team loses, the best player from the team is granted freedom by the victorious team. Neat. Almost like in Kill Zone 3.
All in all, decent game that sucks you in.